L’image du Monde

In 1246 Gautier de Metz wrote L’image du monde, a popular work that draws heavily upon Latin material, including Honorius of Autun’s Imago mundi, Jacques de Vitry’s Historia Hierosolymitana, Alexander Neckham’s De naturis rerum, and Alain de Lille’s Anticlaudianus. Fitting into the genre of medieval encyclopedic works, this text is split into three parts: medieval theology and sciences, the geography of the world, and the astronomy of the heavens.

L’image du Monde is contained in a thirteenth century manuscript which may have been copied in either Venice or Padua, also containing the Fables (Isopet) of Marie de France (missing only Del singe ki se fist reis) and six Fabliaux. Questions about the Italian provenance of this manuscript, and no other Italian copy of this text is extant.

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